


Righteous

by greendragon_templar



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, Historical Hetalia, Jack finds a dog, Nationverse, World War One, and takes the dog, this is really a stretch but I don't care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 19:54:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17855936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greendragon_templar/pseuds/greendragon_templar
Summary: He’s not kept a dog before, not in the trenches, anyway, mostly out of fear, and the fear of sentimentality, his unwillingness to put his heart on the line to the same degree as his body, but a protective feeling is taking hold faster than he can think straight and counter it.





	Righteous

**Author's Note:**

  * For [historia_vitae_magistras](https://archiveofourown.org/users/historia_vitae_magistras/gifts).



By the time Jack realises it’s raining he’s soaked to the bone, and the taste of it is far sweeter than rum. He’s not drunk, not _really_ , but his mind’s foggier than the landscape, that which pens him in. He almost prefers physical over mental restraint - if only because it’s simpler to escape. The rain feels truly familiar. He may as well be standing under black clouds in late December, while lightning threatens from afar and hot roofs offer up steam to the heavens. He forgets, momentarily, that here the trenches just eat up all the moisture, like burrows or caves, and if the rain’s not inside the earth it’s inside a corpse, or drowning a rat, or ruining someone’s dinner. It isn’t like Australia. The soil isn’t parched; it’s fit to burst.

It's a conundrum: at the same time, he both wants to be here and wants nothing more than to leave. But he’ll stay here amongst the mud, at least, until he can settle himself enough to return. Arguments are worse than drinking for his state of mind. Drinking placates, and quarrels do nothing but ruffle him and undo his focus, pushing him back to where he began.

What was it all about? Something petty. An accusation – some drunk idiot’s wild claim that Jack stole his rations. Or a watch, maybe – he doesn’t remember. Either way, he knows better now than to contentedly rely on his own status and rank when he’s the only Indigenous soldier in the trench.

Jack fights back nausea and rubs his eyes, leaving tiny scratches underneath the bottom lids due to the state of his fingernails, and he glances at the rivulets rolling down the dark brown surface of his hands. He holds them out, entwines his fingers together to cup the rain and splash it back into his face, more than likely giving the false impression to onlookers that he hasn’t seen a drop in years. Walking a few paces, putting a few metres between himself and the trenches behind him – and, by extension, the frontline – he thinks about floods and riverbanks and barramundi in the wet season, and of deserts that spring to life overnight.

All of that’s been left behind – his only anchor to that world comes on paper.

He walks, consciously noting his own footing, the way that he manufactures his own stride to avoid any possibility of falling victim to the mud. With a vaguely clandestine air, he produces a can of bully beef from the inside of his shirt. Reading the label vacantly, he figures that it’s a miracle he wasn’t spotted leaving, with a lumpy rectangle jutting out from his breast. The only reason he took it was that he was that it felt _right_ in wake of the soldier’s accusation; he’d never have snatched it otherwise. Tomorrow he’ll tell the bastard he took it from that he was so drunk he must’ve thrown it out towards No Man’s Land, like a grenade.

There’s no telling how long he’ll be here, innards still red-hot with anger whenever he recalls the argument, but knowing full well, at some deeper level, that he’ll be over it before the night’s out and – whether he likes it or not – things will be back as they were. Life immediately returns to that same equilibrium, rarely upset by anything, not even _deaths_ , now. Eat, laugh, drink, mourn, and reset it all by the time the week’s out.

Mockingly (or, maybe not), England told him he had the best attitude in the trench. Jack’s willing to cling to that.

He’d rather believe it’s due to his own personality, too, and goes beyond just the decades of hardship, the sights he’s desperate to forget. But at any rate, he’s the first to spring back after anything happens, opening conversations with rum and some fucking awful joke, whether it’s directed at an amputee or a nurse. And he _is_ optimistic, for the most part. He must be. He doesn’t have anything (or _anyone_ ) else to provide the cheer in his place. He doesn’t want to let down his sister, even if he hasn’t seen her in a fortnight, because she expects it of him.

He raises his head to the rumbling echo of a dog’s bark, at least one thing that’s unchanged from one side of the world to the other. There’s no chance he’d give it a second thought, in his regular state. But in his present mood he’s all too ready to assign negative characteristics to whatever he sees and hears, and the noise plucks at his brain, prying as deep as it can. In that second, it makes him think only of packs facing down thylacines, accompanied by the crack of a gun. Once, twice, harsh and loud despite the rain. He turns, almost slipping on icy mud.

Isn’t it too hoarse for that, too desperate? It reminds him of the thylacine itself, few as they now are. An outwards-reaching cry, a _plea_.

The noise comes again, and merges with yelps and whines that succeed in piercing the veil. Perhaps, all this time, that’s what it’s been trying to do, knocking at the door of his more charitable, impulsive judgment. Obediently, Jack gathers himself up, pulls himself together, and pursues the source.

He sighs inwardly as he does, unable to think of any good argument for humouring the sound rather above turning back around and settling in for the night to await a better dawn. A distant bark in the night isn’t a strange phenomenon. Every lonely trench has a dog in it – sometimes, the dog’s the only thing left. In others, the dog’s the only living creature inside the trench with depth in its eyes, with the will to exist.

Jack almost doesn’t want to see what fate has befallen it.

The trek takes a good quarter of an hour, and there it is, a miserably _common_ sight: a wretched dog, anchored by a thin chain wound around a dying tree, attempting to fling itself into oblivion, testing the limits of its own constraints, and stifling and choking its bark. Jack narrows his eyes and staggers nearer. Quickly he identifies it as a large, woolly terrier. It’s always the hunters or the racers, Jack reflects. It’s made apparent that no one views this one as a comfort animal, furthermore. The more it pulls, the more Jack starts to believe he can see its bones.

He can’t see another human being for miles, and he’s willing to ignore that perhaps, they’ve just merged with the landscape.

“Oi! How’s it going? Here!”

The dog finds the needed humanity in Jack’s voice; its barks and whines fail to cease, but now the attention’s all on him.

“Who’s tied you up? Don’t pull. Don’t pull. Fucking hell.” Jack hauls himself out of the mud, hands and knees glistening, glancing resentfully over his shoulder at the hidden pothole that snared his foot. “Fuck, what happened to you?”

Jack passes his hand between the chain and the dog’s neck, holding it fast as the icy links burn the softer parts of his hands, ascertaining with what little moonlight he has that there are lacerations all around where the chain rests, alongside other gleaming sores on its sides, and near one of its ears. “You poor bastard,” he breathes, as the dog licks his hand. Its eyes are liquid; it drops its head. “I’ll murder the bloody bastard that did this to you.” He runs his free hand through the short curly fur on the dog’s head, down along its back, forgetting he’s coated in filth. Jack tastes the dirt on his knuckles when he presses a hand over his own mouth, stifling the urge to throw up that hasn’t left in half an hour. Now, he feels it more acutely than ever.

Jack’s seen this same dog before, like a ghost, in a thousand different trenches. But never quite like this; his heart’s thudding. “Starving?” he says, answering his own question by holding up the can of beef, temporarily abandoned amidst the mud. He hacks at it with a pocketknife, scooping out the contents with the three middle fingers of his right hand, trying not to slice the back of his hand on the edge. “Tastes like shit, mind you,” he comments, stroking the dog’s head with his free hand. “I’d say ‘better you than me’ but it really _is_ that bad. Don’t have anything else – not unless you’re used to hardtack.” A few of the dog’s teeth are broken already; he wouldn’t want to risk it.

“Were you calling out? Could’ve sworn you were. Why didn’t anyone come back?” As with all nights of this sort, the unpleasantness of it can be mellowed with the sound of his own voice, and now, improved by the dog’s presence. “Is no one around?”

The dog attempts to jump up onto Jack’s knees, and he moves forward enough so that it can, even with the short length of chain. He makes no attempt to quieten his laugh.

“Not so bad, are you?” Jack wipes his hands on his pants, glad the meat’s gone to a good home.

He doesn’t need anyone else to tell him he’s doing the right thing. The dog’s plight soon banishes all the resentful thoughts of earlier; it’s just an animal, a spectre in the night, leaping over trenches and killing rats for no reward (there’s dried blood around its mouth, and at a guess, Jack would say it wasn’t all the dog’s own).

Jack stands back for a moment, staring off into the distance, and the question of what he’s even doing here returns to prod at him. At any rate, feeding someone’s poor mistreated dog is better than stewing in his own problems, but at what cost? Is it even effective – _sustainable_ – to invest this kind of energy, the seed of attachment, in fragile beings when he’s done more than enough of that with men he’s scarcely met? It isn’t a fresh query in any sense; he’d be lying if he said it wasn’t in the back of his mind constantly, a permanent fixture and a testament to the agony he’s put himself through in a vain attempt to adapt. But it comes back, again and again, impressing itself on him while he considers his options.

Which, by itself, is unusual for him; Jack guesses that it’s just the stress getting under his skin that’s keeping him from proceeding any further. A decision made with only a scrap of consideration given over to it is better than no decision at all. Perhaps there is a minute part of him that recognises he shouldn’t be here, that it would be the better choice to turn back, to leave the poor animal to the same fate that is undoubtedly being repeated in the proximity of other trenches, for miles around. Not even nationhood is enough to stop all of it, not at once; not now.

“Fuck, I can’t run off now,” he says to the dog; it licks his hand. “Or else I wouldn’t’ve come.”

Jack strokes its side, studies the faint glare of the moon on the dog’s eyes and nose. “What d’you reckon?”

What’s the value of a rescue? Higher than that of polite blindness, of allowing someone else to win out. The dog called out to him; who’s to say it’d do it again, even if he was around? What’s the ultimate purpose of being able to call himself _Australia_ if he can’t get away with the occasional petty crime, justified?

In those few minutes, there’s no formal decision-making process in his mind, just a logical leap to a seemingly logical conclusion. He’s not kept a dog before, not in the trenches, anyway, mostly out of fear, and the fear of sentimentality, his unwillingness to put his heart on the line to the same degree as his body, but a protective feeling is taking hold faster than he can think straight and counter it. Jack bloodies himself on the chain as he unties it, turning his head now and then to beg the poor dog to stop straining so that he can progress, and wonders if he’s just imagining the chain sticking to his skin, or whether the temperature has dropped so _far_ in the time that he wandered over here from his starting position, drenched and forgetful.

“What the _fuck_ are you doing?” someone says, and Jack realises that it isn’t just the voice inside his head. He vainly orders his hands to move faster than they are; the dog begins barking furiously, more alert to the urgency of their situation than Jack allows himself to process. He’s still going at it when he feels a hand on his shoulder, uncomfortably cool against his sodden uniform. Jack kicks the bully beef tin aside as he turns, clinging to the dog’s collar, and brandishing his pocket knife with the other hand. There’s a stain on the blade from when he used it a moment ago, and he prays it looks like blood.

There’s the sensation of being close to naked without his rifle to defend himself, not even a bayonet to wave about.

“Is this your dog?” he snaps, the moment he finds his voice. “Is it?”

“Yes,” says the other immediately, an officer, as Jack discerns, with his trousers only half done up. “You’re threatening me, is that it?” The officer reluctantly raises his hands partway, a surrender reeking of mockery. They circle one another, Jack always keeping the dog in his peripheral vision, before dashing forward to drop the last coil of the chain, satisfied by the wet _smack_ of it against the ground. The mud quickly devours the links. Gently, Jack places his hand between the dog’s neck and collar once again, coaxing the animal to his side. His own calmness is startling, but wasn’t this inevitable? The officer stops, shuffles his feet. Jack loosens his grip on the dog’s collar once more so that it can swivel around enough to slowly lick its own wounds.

“Yeah,” Jack replies. “I’m glad you see. I’m taking her back to my trench; don’t think about following.”

“Do you seriously—”

“It’s an intervention.”

Jack hears the derision in the response: “On whose authority are you acting?”

“The Australian population. We need as many healthy dogs as we can get.” Relishing the words in his mouth, Jack allows himself the self-indulgent retort, stabbing the air once more with the pocketknife.

He doesn’t know what it is, but the thrill of the moment is surpassing anything he’s experienced on the battlefield in the last few weeks. Something to do with the fact the person he’s up against is a British soldier, he supposes.

He laughs at himself.

“You’re entirely too drunk to be doing this,” says the officer, with audible uncertainty. “ _Surely_.”

“If I was drunk, I’d be gone,” Jack says, truthfully. “Stay right where you are.” He spits. “Savage bloody bastard.”

“You can’t—” The officer’s expression has transitioned effortlessly from shock, from confidence and half-smiles, to scorn, to a less lenient tone. The officer’s arms, dropped from their position over his head down to swing at his sides, are brought back up to his chest.

With a shrug, he advances back toward the dog, and Jack’s own mindset flips just as easily. He can’t shout, not if he wants to downplay the interaction later on, but he can snarl.

“Your dog’d die for you, willingly! Tomorrow, even. Christ, look at her. Look at her. I’d kill you myself if I didn’t have somewhere to be. I’ll make it so that she’s buried by the end; you mightn’t get the same.”

The dog whimpers.

“You really are serious. You’re stealing my dog.”

“Took you this fucking long.”

“If anyone hears you’re out doing this—”

“You left her in the open. It’s all fair.”

“It’s a dog, not a gun.”

“I bet you treat your gun better.”

“Give me your name,” the officer throws back. “Now!”

“Tell Kirkland it was Jack. That’s it. See if he minds.”

The officer doesn’t move when Jack takes the dog away with him, encouraging it with a light pull at its collar, stashing the knife away in his belt. To his surprise, the dog makes no attempts at resistance nor does it seem to be anymore in doubt than he is. It helps, Jack supposes, that he’s never without snacks on his person, especially the good ones. He feeds it tidbits of cheese as they walk, coming to a halt only as they draw close to the lip of the trench once again.

“Let me get a look at you again. That’s right. There we go. Good girl.” The dog’s posture is odd, even in the dark, but it’s receptive to careful hands that avoid the face and go for the sides, and a low tone. Too careless and Jack provokes a growl. “I’m sorry. Fuck me, that was an accident, I promise.”

The gravity of the act – and its swiftness – fails to impact him at all, certainly not immediately and not in any observable way beyond that. He has a dog, now, and an enemy, and no regrets to speak of. His mood from earlier in the evening sank away with the abandoned tin.

\--

Jack’s clothes are still waterlogged in the morning, but the moisture on his face is something else entirely, if the smell is anything to go by.

Reaching out, his hands latch onto wet dog, and he’s eagerly berated by the other men in the trench – as soon as they stop passing her around between them for pats and to feed her parts of their breakfasts.

 _Where did you get the dog?_ it starts with, before proceeding to _Holy fuck, Jack stole a dog!,_ eventually culminating in the same delight it started with. He’d be lying if he said he regretted any of it, for a second.

He names her Matilda, and home doesn’t feel as far away as before.


End file.
